Thanks everybody for your patience waiting for this chapter! I am a nursing student so during the school year I don't do much other than homework and cry. I will try my hardest to keep them coming quickly, but even if it is slow they will keep coming.

As always thanks to everybody for sticking this one out with me. I always appreciate all the comments and suggestions and I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for all the cliffhangers but they're mostly too good to pass up!

Until next time!

Chapter 14:

Rachel and Quinn are locked inside of a room alone together in the far side of the house while the company they'd somehow found themselves keeping discuss their fate.

For Quinn, it feels unfair that she doesn't have a say in the matter, but she interprets it as a good sign. Her captors had put her back here because they had no idea what they were going to do with her and they didn't want to discuss it in front of her and come across as weak.

Quinn sees it as an advantage, but Rachel isn't so sure. She thinks that it adds a sense of desperation to Darlene's character that she doesn't think bodes well for their fate.

Quinn has been searching for a means to escape since the door had been closed behind them. She has been at the window looking for a way out of it, but the glass had been blown out and replaced with a solid piece of plywood.

Quinn tries to peel the wood from the wall, but it is nailed in tight and the only thing she manages to get for her efforts are several broken fingernails. After that, she attempts to give the wood a few firm shoves with her shoulder but it doesn't budge and Quinn doesn't dare try harder for fear of attracting attention.

There is no way out of here.

"What kind of drug dealers are these?" Quinn hisses through clenched teeth. "They can't even afford to replace the windows."

"They wouldn't have put us in here if they thought we would be able to get out, Quinn!" Rachel argues. In her panic, her voice is high-pitched and loud. Her syllables bleed together desperately.

Rachel isn't stupid - although she reasons that fact is up for debate after today - she knows how things like this work. She knows that children get snatched up all the time, walking home from school or even from their open bedroom windows in the middle of the night. She knows that there are teenagers out there who call Help Wanted ads they see on telephone poles looking for summer jobs and turn up for the interview never to be heard from again. She knows that there are parents out there willing to sell their children out for cash or drugs without blinking…

These stories are not as uncommon as people think. They happen all the time. Every day. Rachel knows that. She is that now.

"She's going to freaking kill us," Rachel pants. Her breath is heavy and high in her chest. She is getting no oxygen, but she is still pacing frantically across the room so that her head is starting to spin. Her eyes are fixed, pupils dilated. She is scanning for a way out of this room that never comes. They are going to die in here. She just knows it.

"Calm down, Rachel. Nobody is going to kill us," Quinn sighs, trying to be the voice of reason against Rachel's panic.

Of course, she is not even sure that she believes herself, but somebody needs to be in control. If they both lost their cool they might as well start digging their own graves now.

"I've seen documentaries on this stuff, Quinn!" Rachel argues. When she turns towards the blonde, her face is rabid. "They're gonna load us up on drugs so our brains turn to mush and then they'll cut off our fingers if we don't listen and send them back to our parents in tiny boxes. They're gonna make us deliver their drugs and sell us out to creepy old men with weird accents and then, when we're all dried up, they're gonna freaking kill us!"

"Okay, first of all, you need to watch less television," Quinn says calmly, attempting to reel Rachel back in. "Second, nobody is going to do any of that stuff to us."

"How do you know?" Rachel demands. Quinn feels her shoulders sink. Her eyes quickly scan the room to ensure they are truly the only ones in here, and then she leans in close to Rachel, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"That wasn't my mom I called on the phone," she tells Rachel with a low voice. "It was Shelby. She knew that we came here. She was already on her way. I told her how to get here. She's almost here."

"What is Shelby is going to do?" Rachel hiccups, not convinced. "She's going to get killed right next to us!"

Quinn sighs. Rachel is falling apart faster than she can put her back together, and the blonde knows that she is going to have to find Rachel's reset button because they both need to be completely and utterly present if they are going to make it out of here alive.

It doesn't seem like Quinn can say anything to convince Rachel that they're going to be okay. Luckily, Quinn doesn't think she has to say anything. She always has a backup plan tucked away for emergencies, and this is certainly an emergency.

Quinn grabs Rachel by the shoulders tight. Before Rachel can ask what she is doing, the blonde leans forward and presses her lips hard against Rachel's.

It is hardly romantic. The kiss is hard to the point that it is almost painful, and Rachel's eyes fly open wide the moment Quinn presses her lips against hers, taken aback.

At least it had taken Rachel's mind off the idea that they are about to be murdered.

"What was that for?" Rachel asks just as soon as Quinn pulls away. The color is rising back into her cheeks. Her voice is low and quiet again, just as Quinn had intended.

"You looked like you needed it," Quinn shrugs, somehow managing a small smile despite their situation. "Besides, I don't think that I ever paid you back for last night. I wanted to make sure I did just in case I didn't get that chance again."

"I thought you said we aren't going to get murdered," Rachel challenges. She is being completely serious yet still, somehow, the calm is settling into her stomach, spreading all around her like a warm blanket.

"We're not," Quinn insists. "But you never know what's going to happen. People step into the street and get hit by buses all the time. Besides, I'm afraid that you'll hate me after we get out of here, so I needed to make my move while I still could."

"Why would I hate you?" Rachel asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Because this trip was my idea."

Rachel sighs and deflates. Her eyes tug away from Quinn's and train to the ground.

"But I'm the one who pushed it this far," she insists. She reaches down between them and grabs onto Quinn's hands with her own. Her eyes close. She leans forward and rests her forehead against Quinn's, squeezing her hands hard. "I'm sorry."

"We're going to be okay," Quinn breathes and she feels Rachel nod because when you desperately want to believe that something is true, you can convince yourself of just about anything.

Quinn doesn't now how long they are locked in this room. Five minutes? An hour? She wouldn't know the difference.

She is still pressed up against the perimeter searching for weaknesses in the foundation that might help her and Rachel escape when the door rips open.

Quinn stands straight up, trying to put an innocent look on her face like she had not just been trying to escape. She doesn't know what these people would do to her if they knew. Worse, Darlene has already proven that she is not above threatening Rachel to get her to comply. She wouldn't put the brunette at risk like that.

"Get away from the wall," Darlene hisses. "Get your hands where I can see them."

Quinn raises her hands high in the air as she steps into the center of the room. Rachel, molded to her side, mimics her.

The blonde feels terribly vulnerable like this, but she isn't surprised by the demand. The last time Darlene had let her guard down in front of her, Quinn had left her partner with a busted jaw. The woman didn't come across as stupid enough to let that happen twice.

"You."

The towering woman descends upon Rachel. Her tone is commanding enough that Rachel takes a step towards her, but threatening enough that she swallows heavily while she does it.

"You're coming with me," Darlene informs her. She wraps fingers - thick as sausages - around Rachel's skinny upper arm and jerks her forward, but Rachel is so frightened that she is dead weight inside of Darlene's hands. Her legs drag behind her. If Darlene wasn't holding onto her so tight, she would have fallen over.

"Are you deaf?" Darlene accuses. She gives Rachel's arm a sharp tug, trying to get the girl to stand on her own volition, but her legs don't seem to be cooperating with the rest of her body.

"W-what about Quinn?" Rachel stutters, amazed that she can still find her voice.

"Your girlfriend is staying here. Don't worry, the boys will take good care of her."

The woman smirks maliciously. Rachel feels her fear flood over her tenfold. She knows that if she lets this woman separate her from Quinn right now, there is a good chance that she will never see the blonde again.

Rachel looks over her shoulder towards Quinn, who is trying to keep that tough façade on for her sake, but Rachel can sense it cracking. Quinn is just as afraid as she is.

Quinn knows that she cannot let Darlene take Rachel away from this house. She knows that she cannot allow herself to be left here alone with Peter Gabbanelli and Darlene's slack-jawed partner who already has a vendetta against her.

There is no way that she can muscle her way out of this situation, but Darlene had already spared her life once tonight for showing some guts; maybe it will work twice in a row.

"I'm coming too!"

While everybody else seems to be stunned by Quinn's nerve, Darlene gives her a look like she had been expecting it. The cruel smile never once leaves the woman's face. She looks almost amused by Quinn, like she respects her gusto, but will not be swayed by it. Quinn is sure this woman has come across plenty of people in her time whose grit only got them killed.

"Do you see this, Blondie?" Darlene asks the girl, waving the pistol in her face. Her grip on Rachel's arm tightens with every word that she speaks until it is tight as a vice. "This means that I'm in charge. If you want to make this difficult, we can make this difficult."

Quinn shrinks backwards. She certainly doesn't appreciate having a gun waved in her face. She doesn't appreciate Darlene using the same nickname the Skanks once assigned for her either. She finds it patronizing, and that is worse than any threat.

Despite her better judgment, Quinn nods her head once curtly to indicate that she has accepted complete control from Darlene.

Darlene exhales softly, and for a moment, Quinn thinks that she is going to forget her latest discretion. Then, Quinn blinks and Darlene has raised her gun once more to point straight at Quinn's chest.

"Then again, why are we still pretending?" Darlene asks no one in particular. "We all know how this is going to end. Why don't we just get right to it."

"No!"

Now it is Rachel's turn to speak up. She flails violently inside of Darlene's grip, desperate to throw off the woman's aim. Darlene growls at her, hating the chaos that these two girls she'd wanted nothing to do with in the first place is causing.

"I'll do whatever you want!" Rachel begs. "I'll go with you. I'll do anything. Please, just don't hurt her!"

"Smart girl."

Darlene is speaking to Rachel, but her eyes never leave Quinn's. It is like she is trying to tell the blonde that it would be in her best interest to follow Rachel's lead and start to comply.

Quinn looks towards Rachel, searching for answers. She watches as the brunette's eyebrows slant.

"It's gonna be okay," Rachel mouths to Quinn because she feels like she has to. She doesn't want Quinn to keep speaking out because the blonde thinks that it is in Rachel's best interest to defend her. Rachel is afraid that the only thing that is going to get Quinn is killed.

A moment ago it had been Quinn talking Rachel down. Now the roles are reversed and while Rachel didn't understand how Quinn had been able to do it before, she does now. Now, she understands that when you love somebody, it is easier to find courage when you know you cannot possibly be the person who brings their entire world crashing down.

Of course, she has no idea whether or not it will be okay at all, but she needs Quinn to believe that it will be so she forces herself to believe it too.

The brunette blinks up at her current company. She spots the man whose jaw had been made crooked by Quinn's impressive upper cut and Peter… Peter, who has been hiding in the far side of the room since things had taken this sudden turn. Peter, who has been quiet despite the fact that he is the one who put them here.

Without particularly meaning to, Rachel's eyes linger on the man. Her face is alight with betrayal even though she is the one who had needed this to work so badly that she had walked straight into it.

She should have known. She should have known that something was wrong when instead of finding that handsome, charismatic teenager who was voted most likely to be half of William McKinley Class of 94's Most Successful Couple, she only found a desperate, pathetic man who has spent the last eighteen years giving away little pieces of himself at a time for a constant high and a quick fix.

Had it been worth it? Rachel just ruined not only her life, but Quinn's. And what her fathers? Quinn's mother? Shelby? All of these lives had been destroyed tonight just because she couldn't accept the truth.

Rachel is still focusing on Peter when she hears the gunshot rip out from next to her. It is so loud and so unexpected that it renders her temporarily deaf and makes her senses distort. If Darlene didn't still have the grip she did on Rachel's arm, she would have fallen down.

Her ears still ringing, Rachel blinks her eyes open cautiously.

She is expecting to find a bullet hole in her or worse, in Quinn, but she doesn't.

Instead, it is Peter who is staggering on his feet. Blood is blooming like a poppy against the center of his white t-shirt. Seconds later, his knees give out and he falls forwards into a slick pool of his own blood.

Rachel's jaw dangles loose on its hinges. She doesn't know what to think. She doesn't know what to feel. Peter wasn't exactly high on her list of favorite people at the moment, but had she wanted him dead? Certainly not.

Would anybody believe her when she told them that she hadn't meant to take all these people out with her?

"You're in luck, Blondie," Darlene grunts. Her breath is hot inside of Rachel's still-ringing ear. Her voice is casual in a way that tells Rachel that she had been planning on killing Peter from the moment he brought her through her front door tonight. "I had an employee who was a liability and had to let him go. I just got a new opening."

One week after the Winter Formal and Shelby still feels like she is moving in slow motion.

It is like a relentless cloud is following her everywhere she goes. She is trapped in a vicious sadness. Her brain is always miles behind the rest of her body.

At school, Peter still acts like everything is normal. He still calls Shelby his girlfriend, he still makes her hold his hand in the hallways, he still leans forward to kiss her even though he must notice how she trembles every time he does.

In the last stretch before graduation day, Peter becomes the model of efficiency as though he has been sucking up all the energy that Shelby can no longer seem to find.

Peter brags constantly that he is his father's golden boy. He runs errands for the man constantly with the obedience of a well-trained dog and is not afraid to let everybody know it. He wants people to be afraid of him. It's almost as though he gets off on that sort of thing.

"Why are you acting so weird?" Peter finally asks her the Friday after Formal as the couple slows to a halt in front of Peter's locker. The bell for homeroom had rung ten minutes ago, but Peter hasn't been terribly concerned with class lately. He knows there isn't a teacher in this school who would dare challenge him.

Peter leans close into Shelby as though he is expecting to see something physical that might explain her behavior. He is so close to her that for the first time, Shelby notices that there is a small ring of gold around his pupils, highlighting his otherwise muddy brown eyes.

Shelby pulls her lower lip in between her teeth and bites down hard. This is not the first time that Peter has made her wonder if he even remembers what he had done to her on Saturday night, or if he just doesn't care. She hates that she can't tell.

"I didn't sleep very well last night," Shelby lies, because – now that she knows what he is capable of - she doesn't want to set Peter off. Besides, it is only a few more months before she graduates. She can keep pretending until then and then, she can disappear. She has no intention on setting foot in Lima, Ohio ever again after that.

"Let's skip homeroom," Peter suggests, slamming his locker shut. "We can take a nap in my car."

"No!" Shelby gasps. She doesn't mean to raise her voice, but she does, and Shelby has to physically back away from Peter's curious gaze to collect herself. "I… I mean, I have a track meet tonight. They won't let me run if I skip."

"Are you sure there isn't something else going on, Shelby?" Peter asks, clearly not believing her.

Shelby swallows and looks down to the floor. Of course there is something else going on. There is a lot going on. Peter's betrayal had been hard on her. The only thing she can think about anymore is that she had once trusted Peter enough to tell him secrets she's never told anybody else. The only thing she can consider is all the hours she'd wasted thinking that he was the one.

"Why would you ask that?" Shelby detours. It is the wrong thing to say. Peter's entire face seems to change as he reaches down and grabs onto Shelby's wrist hard. It is a subtle way of telling her that he does not appreciate her currently behavior.

"Because I can't help but feel like you've been avoiding me lately."

When Shelby had first met Peter, she used to brush up against him on purpose just to feel his skin against hers. She would make any excuse just to spend time with him. At night, she would close her eyes and see them together. She had hoped and prayed for months that Peter Gabbanelli would get down on one knee and ask her out on a date, and then, one day, he had.

Now, she can't even look him in the eye without wanting to throw up.

"Nothing is going on," she whispers quietly. "I promise."

Sweat clings to Shelby's forehead despite the coolness of the night as she races towards the sound of the gunshot she is certain she just heard.

She fights through knee-high grass, deep divots, and clusters of junk. It slows her down, but she is determined and desperate, if not just a little bit terrified of what she is going to find at the end of this road.

She is maybe ten yards from the front porch when the door bursts open, shrouding the front lawn with a light that nearly blinds her.

Instinctively, Shelby slams her heels into the ground to stop her momentum. She throws herself into an overgrown nest of brambles to hide. She can't get caught now; not when she is so close.

A rather large figure appears in the doorway. Shelby cannot make out any details through the shadows, but as she looks closer, she notices that it is not one person, but one very large person dragging a much smaller one down to the driveway.

Shelby's heart clenches. The larger individual cannot be Peter, the shadow of the figure is far too tall, but the smaller figure has got to be either Quinn or Rachel.

For a moment, the mother surges with pride because, for what it's worth, the girl is putting up quite the fight, but she is outweighed by her captor by at least 100 pounds and it is not long until the person holding her becomes fed up and slams her so hard against a nearby truck that Shelby can hear the sound from where she is hiding.

Shelby hears a sob come out from the back of the girl's throat, and she recognizes it immediately.

Rachel.

An animalistic instinct roars inside of Shelby. This person is trying to put Rachel into a vehicle, she is trying to take her somewhere. Shelby is running out of time.

Groping along the muddy ground, Shelby looks for anything that she might be able to use as a weapon. The only thing that she finds is a handful of dead leaves, a few twigs, and a rock that is large and heavy and barely fits inside of her hand.

Shelby picks up the rock and bounces it inside of her hand. It will have to do.

Shelby has never been particularly athletic. She had run cross country in high school, but that was mostly for the purpose of stacking up her extracurriculars.

The woman closes her eyes and prays for a miracle. She has a lot to lose if she misses. She could hit Rachel. She could hit nobody and instead, alert whoever is holding onto Rachel of her presence.

But she has no other option, so Shelby draws her arm back and releases the rock. She knows that she is out of practice with the whole divine communication thing, but she recognizes that this is something too big to mess up. She believes herself incapable of missing…

And she doesn't.

Rachel can hear herself screaming, but she cannot seem to process that the sound is coming from her own throat.

She hears herself yell to Quinn. She hears Quinn yell back. She feels herself getting dragged out the front door until she can no longer see Quinn or Peter still bleeding on the floor…

The brunette struggles to turn over her shoulder to get a good look at Quinn, certain it will be her last time ever able to do so. She wants to take everything about the blonde in despite the look of anguish Rachel knows is on her face.

Rachel never gets that glimpse as Darlene throws open the front door and drags Rachel out into the night.

The dark is profound in this vacant place. Rachel cannot see very far in front of her. She can barely make out Peter's truck; dead and abandoned in the driveway behind a few other cars that look just as run down.

Rachel doesn't know where Darlene plans on taking her. She has a vague memory of her telling her partner to take Quinn into the backyard and get rid of her earlier, and wonders if this is it for her… The way Rachel is starting to see it, that might be better than the alternative of allowing Darlene to take her God knows where.

Meanwhile, Darlene seems to be losing patience. Rachel is dead weight in her panic, and while she is far from a large girl by any means, Darlene still struggles to drag her.

The lumbering woman grabs Rachel by the back of her shirt and throws her as hard as she can into the side of Peter's truck. Her back hits it hard. The blow knocks the wind out of her.

"You listen to me, girl," Darlene spits. Her hand is around Rachel's throat now, and it's tightening with every word. "There are two ways that this is going to end. Either you do everything I tell you to do, or I kill you and your little friend right here right now. Got it?"

Rachel feels her face crunch with fear. She cannot speak with Darlene's hand still wrapped tight around her throat but somehow, manages a stiff nod.

"Good," Darlene sneers. She releases her grip around Rachel's neck and the girl's knees give out. She stumbles to the dusty ground, grasping at her throat as she gasps for breath.

She is still crouched in front of Darlene when she sees something soaring through the air out of the corner of her eye. Rachel cannot make out what it is in the darkness, but a moment later, it strikes Darlene in the center of her forehead with a hollow thud. The blood begins to flow a second later.

The woman makes a small sound of surprise and then a cry of pain. She brings her hands up to her bleeding forehead.

Rachel has no idea what just happened, but she makes the decision in a fraction of a second not to miss this seemingly divine signal. Her neck is still throbbing and she still hasn't gotten all her breath back, but she doesn't waste a moment. She shoots up to her feet and she starts to run.

Panting, Rachel sprints away from the home at breakneck speeds. The brunette is certainly not a star athlete by any means, but she has never been more grateful for her strict elliptical regimen in her life.

From somewhere behind her, Rachel hears a gunshot.

She flinches at the sound, expecting to feel the piercing of a bullet. Her foot slips on the dusty driveway. She nearly falls, but manages to catch her footing the moment she realizes she hasn't been shot. The bullet had missed.

The girl hears another shot and risks turning over her shoulder. Darlene is shooting in every direction, seemingly blinded by the blood in her eyes. She has no idea where Rachel is, but for what she is lacking in aim, she seems to be trying to make up for by shooting as many bullets as possible.

The girl hears another shot and then another. The fifth bullet whizzes so close past her ear that she hears it blow past her before lodging in a tree inches to her left.

Desperation ignites a renowned vigor inside of her chest. She doesn't even notice the pain in her neck or her lungs or her legs anymore. She just runs.

Another shot rings out and almost immediately, Rachel feels a searing pain rip through her arm.

It hits her hard enough that she is knocked forward. She hits the gravel driveway face first and feels her nose start to bleed, but she doesn't feel any pain. Her adrenaline is as high as it has ever been. She doesn't even process the possibility that she had just been shot. Instead, she allows her momentum to take over. She rolls forward without stopping in an impressive summersault and launches herself back up to her feet. She never stops moving forward.

Her arm is throbbing. It feels like somebody had just lit a match against it. She can feel the blood start to pool underneath her sweater, but she can't stop. She is so close.

Rachel doesn't hear any more gun shots. She is just starting to think that she might actually make it out of here alive when she runs past a cluster of bushes and somebody jumps out of them.

She feels a pair of hands grab her and reel her into the brush. Her heart is inside of her throat with fear. She tries to scream, but before any sound can come out, a hand reaches up and presses hard into her mouth to silence her.

Rachel looks up, her eyes wide with fear. She is expecting to see the last face she'll ever see, but instead she spots just about the last person she thought she'd find here.

"Shelby!" Rachel gasps when the woman slowly removes her hand from Rachel's mouth.

Shelby doesn't answer. Instead, she presses her finger against her lips to silence her daughter. Rachel nods to communicate her understanding. She studies her mother closely, taking in the sweat and the dirt and the grime covering her face and her clothes. Rachel notices that Shelby is wearing an expression that matches how Rachel feels to the exact.

"Are you hurt?" Shelby whispers as Darlene starts to call out for her into the darkness. Her voice is distant. When Rachel looks, she spots the woman walking in the opposite direction as where she is hiding. She has no idea where Rachel is. A twinge of hope fills the girl for the first time all night.

"I don't know," Rachel admits, twisting in an effort to get a better look at her arm.

Shelby grabs onto it, searching for a devastating injury. When she had seen Rachel fall amongst that series of gunshots, for a split second, the mother had thought beyond a reasonable doubt that the girl was dead.

But when she looks, the only thing she finds is a scrape on Rachel's cheek from where she had hit the ground, and a tear in the upper arm of her sweater, accompanied by a bleeding stripe where it looks like a bullet had removed a layer of flesh.

Shelby cannot tell how deep the wound is between the dark and the blood, but even if it isn't deep, in an environment like this, infection could set in within minutes. Time isn't on their side. It hasn't been all night.

"I think it just grazed me," Rachel comments, noticing the way Shelby is still looking at her like she is expecting her to drop dead at any moment.

Shelby grimaces, like she is the one who can actually feel the pain of Rachel's wound, but she knows that she cannot linger on it. It is not a pressing enough injury to be added to her immediate worries.

"Rachel, listen to me," Shelby whispers very quickly. Her eyes are wide and serious. This is not the time for her to be angry with Rachel for what she has done, but there is still a tone inside of her voice, daring the girl to defy her. "My car is right on the other side of those bushes. Go inside and lock the doors."

"But Quinn's still inside!" Rachel argues. She has to force her voice to remain in a whisper, but even still, Shelby can hear the panic inside of it. "Peter... Peter was shot! And Quinn is still in there with somebody else and he's going to kill her."

Shelby looks up at her daughter who is staring at her with wide, desperate eyes. She is looking for answers, but something inside of Rachel's words causes Shelby to stutter. Had Peter really been shot? What had happened inside of that house?

Shelby shakes her head. She cannot linger on this information. Looking at Rachel helps her to rethink her perspective. With Rachel here, Shelby no longer thinks about what Peter had done to her and how she doesn't really care whether he lives or dies. Instead, she remembers the first time she'd ever felt a tiny kick inside of her. She remembers how determined she had been eighteen years ago to save Rachel, and how that hasn't changed now just because of the distance that has been between them since.

When Shelby was eighteen, pregnant, and abandoned by her family, her friends, and her boyfriend, her daughter had somehow helped her find the strength to still smile. Today, she realizes that Rachel is going to get her through this in the exact same way.

"I will go get Quinn," Shelby promises. She ignores Rachel's mention of Peter and presses the keys to her Range Rover hard into Rachel's palm. "Go to the car."

"But-"

"This is not up for discussion," Shelby cuts off any excuse that her daughter might make. "Go. Stay low to the ground. I will get Quinn out of that house, but for me to do that, I need you to listen to me."

Rachel hesitates for a fraction of a second longer, but she knows that the longer she waits, the longer she leaves Quinn to the devices people who have already proved to them once that they are not above murder. How much longer before Darlene gets bored looking for her and turns her revenge onto Quinn?

The girl nods her head once before separating herself from Shelby. She disappears to safety while meanwhile, Shelby presses onwards towards the danger. Even as she walks, she is still trying to figure out how she is going to face Peter Gabbanelli and everything he has done to her after all these years.

She looks back only once to make sure that Rachel is out of site and then returns to her task at hand.

She still hasn't seen any evidence of Quinn. Rachel hadn't mentioned anything except for the fact that the blonde was still inside, but Shelby has hardly forgotten the gunshot she had heard coming from inside of the house earlier.

She moves as quietly as possible, laying low in the bushes. She is concentrating so hard on not making any noise that by the time she hears the rustle of leaves behind her, she knows that it is already too late.

Shelby recognizes the threat before she turns around, but she forces herself to face it. She turns and can't seem to suppress the gasp that comes out of her mouth.

"Shelby Corcoran," the woman clicks her tongue. Not even she can manage to hide her expression of surprise. "I'd be damned if I thought I would ever see you again."